


we are here to witness a rebirth

by Starcrossedsky



Series: YWKON [13]
Category: Tales of Crestoria, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crossover, being a blade eater sucks and then you live, we're far to the left of every incarnation of tales canon now friends, xenoblade au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:47:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26131369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: [YWKON]In the forest outside the tower of the Aegis, a desperate soul awakens an ancient blade, and gets more than he bargained for.So does the Aegis, actually.
Relationships: Asch the Bloody & Aegis Alver, Kratos Aurion & Mithos Yggdrasill
Series: YWKON [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1222385
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	1. can you hear the bells ring

**Author's Note:**

> me at rar: so what was mithos doing during the artificial aegis time period anyway  
> rar: oh idk hanging out at his tower I guess  
> me: because I have this idea -  
> rar: GIVE IT TO ME
> 
> Anyway, this is a direct sequel to You Will Forget Our Names (for a value of direct) and technically falls in the same slightly-to-the-left timeline as "this is gospel for insufferable bastards" (aka soup) rather than the main YWKON timeline. There's a *lot* of meaty shit that will wind up getting packed in here eventually but I'm just throwing this at the wall as I finish chunks, so, suffer.
> 
> normal people: including a character named Aegis in a xenoblade AU would be too confusing -  
> me, with galaxy brain on: naming your kid "Aegis" is the equivalent of all the Hispanic kids named Jesus. aegis alver jesus jalver

Every so often, a human will approach the tower.

It's almost welcome, when this happens. It's a break in the monotony, of hiding and waiting and thinking in circles about where to go from here. Kratos comes and goes, because you still need supplies, from time to time, things that you can't grow on a tower balcony or hunt in the surrounding forest. Kratos even more than you, because he still has living, beating flesh.

So sometimes Kratos leaves, and he brings back food and cloth and news. And you - 

You sit on the edge of the tower, overlooking the forest from high above, and wonder what it is you're supposed to do now. You keep a hand wrapped around the locket full of Martel at your breast, and wonder what you even _can_ do.

But every so often, a human will approach the tower, and for a little while, you can do _something_.

Today is one of those days.

But not in the usual way. 

Because, usually, you aren't aware of the humans until they're practically on your doorstep. Sometimes you get a little more warning, if they have a powerful enough blade with them, but that's rare. Blades in resonance aren't that visible to your senses unless you look for them, and you don't normally bother.

But this time, it's not just a blade being present. It's a blade _awakening_ , connecting to the network for the first time in... You run the numbers, idly, and then freeze. You run the numbers again.

Nine hundred years.

_Nine hundred years?!_

And the power flare from the blade awakening doesn't subside. If anything, it grows, until you're confident that there's no way you could _miss_ that blade even if they hadn't awakened so very close to your tower. This is...

A stronger blade than you thought possible. Stronger than any blade you've seen except yourself and your sister. Kratos was a highly powerful blade before he became a flesh eater, and now he's probably one of the, if not _the_ most powerful flesh eater alive, even removing the fact that he's in resonance with you.

This blade isn't stronger than you. But you think they might be stronger than Kratos. 

You turn away from the balcony and sprint through the tower, calling for your driver all the while. You _have_ to see what this blade is.

As for whoever woke them up, well...

People stopped coming looking for the Aegis decades ago. After all, no one who comes to the tower ever comes back.

\----

Kratos is having... not a _good_ day, exactly, but a good _enough_ day that he doesn't let you go alone. You can't fly at top speed towards the forest with him jumping through the trees to keep up with you, but it seems to be fine. The blade doesn't seem to be moving. 

As you get closer, you feel the much slighter tickle of another blade in the clearing. This one is much weaker, and from the kind of energy readings you're getting, might even be dormant. There's also something... _weird_ , neither blade nor not-blade, light-aspected ether aglow. You start to wonder how you never noticed any of this, so close to the base of your tower as it is.

But then again, it's some distance off the road, away from the path you and Kratos usually use to the village on the Sylvarant side. This is on the Tethe'alla side of the tower, and the winding path that does eventually lead in that direction doesn't quite venture close.

You kill the ether in your wings and use the trees to approach the last couple hundred feet. Kratos is behind you, on-edge and brimming with tired wariness.

The scene before you is... Strange.

First, there's the tree. That's the closest you have to a word for it, even though it isn't quite correct, because it's made of crystallized ether, but it reaches towards the sky and _branches_ like a tree, even as it glows white against the sunset-lit evening. You don't know what the _hell_ that is, and pinging it on the network gets no response of any kind. It's like it doesn't even exist.

Then, there's the blade.

He looks, initially, every inch a dark blade, vibrantly red hair aside. But something about him screams _wrong_ when you look at him, firing off a series of pings on the network. He has multiple elements, multiple aspects. 

He's... 

(You're suddenly so glad that Kratos, even as a blade driving the Aegis, doesn't have access to half the information you do.)

He's multiple blades. Compressed and blended into a singular whole, an infinitely tight resonance split down the middle to _make_ a blade. No wonder he's stronger than any blade you've ever seen, when he's a glittering, twisted fusion of them. He's _wrong_ , except you can't imagine anyone would go along with that willingly.

Kratos lands on a branch behind you, and you take a deep breath, trying to stop the horror that you know must be leaking into the emotional bleed before it affects him too badly. No blade would do that to themselves, no matter how manipulated they are by humans. You're not even sure that a single blade's consciousness would survive it intact.

And the awful, uncanny thing about it is that he knows you're there. It's just a flicker, when he lifts his head long enough to look right at you, even though there are a hundred yards and enough trees that you should be concealed completely. You might not be as quiet as Kratos, but you know you're quiet enough that no one should hear you from _that_ far away.

And then there's the other one. The driver.

_He_ is on the ground, at blade-point, the fusion's sword held just shy of his chest. At first you think he's just a human, but the other ether signature is still there, almost buried under the myriad elements of the fusion's strong ether signature. It's water-scented, and not dormant the way you thought it was, but a _partial_ signature.

This time, your disgust gives way not to horror, but to anger. A blade eater. 

You drop out of the tree and make your way down the path towards them, taking the two in in more detail as you go. The fusion's ether lines are an almost shimmering red on his shoulders - the only bare skin he shows aside from his head - and a strange forked shape instead of circles. The blade eater has silver-grey hair and is wearing what looks like it was once a Sylvarant military uniform, though it's clearly seen better days.

You wrap your hand around Martel's shards, briefly, while you're still mostly hidden by the brush. Then you let your hands fall and put your game face on, stepping onto the trail, knowing Kratos will be right behind you. 

(The only reliable thing in the world that you have left, is the knowledge that Kratos will be right behind you.)

"Aren't you going to finish him?" you ask, cutting off whatever the blade eater was saying. "Or are you planning to just sit around and _talk_ all day?"

You'll give the fusion this: He doesn't startle at all, and his grip on the sword he's holding (which is almost as large as yours) doesn't falter an inch. The blade eater, on the other hand, jerks, like he hadn't realized you were there at all.

But the ether in the air... If you were any less confident, any less sure that one blade, even one like _this_ , can't hope to defeat you, you'd shiver under the intensity of the look the fusion gives you.

"Mithos the White, Aegis of the Morning Star," he says, and there's something too-old in that voice, even for a nine hundred years sleeping blade, because no matter how long he was sleeping he should still be a _newborn_. He shouldn't know the titles that you can't been called in living memory (even counting Kratos), from a time when you thought there was still something _worthwhile_ about humans.

And like he's aware of just how far off balance you are, the fusion's expression shifts to the faintest impression of a smirk under the irritation. "Hasn't anyone told you it's rude to interrupt?"

\----> Asch

The glare the Aegis levels at you would make you flinch if you were anyone else, even coming from someone who looks like a human child of twelve. But you ran your own driver through, and after that, what's left to frighten you? Certainly not Mithos the White.

Even if the man standing behind him gives you far more cause for concern. The familiar tickle of not-quite-right ether... You know a flesh eater when you see one, now. 

That still raises the question of exactly what _your_ driver is, but you're smart enough to figure it out. Water ether rings in your senses, not quite strong enough to be a blade's. And if you can make a hybrid by putting a human heart in a blade, then why not the other way around?

He's scared. The vindictive part of you says that he should be. But he's much more scared of Mithos than he is of you, and why wouldn't he be? Most drivers have no reason to think that their blade would actually kill them. Even if they threaten it, it takes more than most blades have to actually go through with it. 

(After all, it's the same as killing yourself for most blades, just with the extra mess of a driver to worry about.)

(Usually blades who kill their drivers, and _don't_ become flesh eaters in the aftermath, are shattered as soon as anyone finds out. No reason good enough for killing a human, plenty of reasons good enough for killing a blade.)

But there's an acceptance to him too, a tiredness, an ache of living through something painful, and that's what stopped you. That, and your intuition, and you put a hell of a lot more trust in that than you do in an Aegis who _apparently_ wants you to stab first and ask questions never.

Unfortunately for Mithos, you'll always ask questions.

"Anyway," you say. "Private driver-and-blade discussion, you weren't invited." 

A jolt of shock through the emotional bleed, almost offense. "You can't address the _Aegis_ like that!" your driver manages to say, all fired up and _proper_. You guess the military uniform isn't just for show, even as beaten and worn as it is.

(Is he a deserter? He must be, though that doesn't explain the how or why. Or why he hasn't gotten clothes that make it less obvious.)

"I'll give him respect when he treats me with some," you say. "Even the Aegis doesn't have the right to interfere in driver-blade relationships he knows nothing about."

A tense silence hangs over the group. You don't let your frustration show, as much as you _want_ to, because you're not going to get any of the answers you want with other people hanging around, not going to get to the bottom of why you woke up to your intuition screaming a protest as you drew a blade on whoever was foolish enough to wake you up.

The silence remains, your driver looking still shocked but a little thoughtful underneath, Mithos glaring at you and just about to open his mouth again, when the final member of this little scene says quietly, "Mithos. He's right."

The Aegis whips his head in the direction of his driver dizzingly fast. "You can't possibly be siding with a human - "

"If either of them is a threat, then we deal with _that_ ," the flesh eater says. "But leave them alone for now."

Mithos... _pouts menacingly_ , and says, "Fine. But we're coming back for answers later." With a final glare thrown over his shoulder, he walks away from the clearing, though not nearly as far away as you'd like. (His ether is like a beacon, too-obvious against the forest.)

His driver meets your eyes for only a fraction of a second before looking away, and following after him. You sigh heavily, and return your attention to the man still at the point of your weapon, now taking shaky breaths.

"Just who are you?" he demands, but the haughtiness is a mask yanked over how deeply unsettled he is, and he doesn't have good enough control over the emotion bleed to entirely disguise it. Probably hasn't ever _had_ to.

"Aegisite Lorelei-Alpha," you rattle off in a single breath, blandly as you can. "A failed attempt at merging blades to create an artificial Aegis which still managed to produce some of the most powerful blades ever born. Call me Asch if you know what's good for you."

"An artificial Aegis..." You can practically hear the gears turning, and you cut them off at the pass.

"Don't be mistaken," you say. "I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but the only thing Aegis-like about me is that I _don't forget_. If you came hoping for the power of the Aegis, you'll have to try your luck convincing the real thing."

Your driver glances in the direction Mithos went, and a sense of exhaustion and failure rattles the emotional bleed. "How typical," he says, with a quiet sort of bitterness, "that I can't even do this much right. No matter my best intentions..."

You shift your grip on your weapon and refuse to let sympathy cut in, as much as it's trying to. (You aren't going to tell him that you didn't _plan_ to remember, didn't think that it would actually work this time, but of course it did. Just when you'd given up.)

(Yeah, you understand how best intentions can earn you nothing but trouble.)

"For someone so hung up on propriety, you're forgetting to introduce yourself," you point out.

For some reason, there's a smile in the wince your driver makes at the reminder. "...Aegis. Aegis Alver."

(Ah, so that's the reason.)

You can't help but wince a little yourself. "I don't know if it's the universe with a fine sense of irony, or just your parents," you tell him.

And before he can respond, you release your grip on your sword, both physically and etherically, letting it fizzle into shadows before it hits the ground (or, rather, hits Aegis in the chest). He looks up at you, the surprise clear in his features as well as the emotional bleed, then stares at the hand you've extended to help him up.

"...Why?" he says. "You were ready to kill me a moment ago."

"Call it trusting my gut," you say, because there's no way you're _actually_ going to explain the whole 'possibly actually infallible hyperintuition' thing to a driver you just met. "You said you had the best of intentions. I'm choosing to believe you. Don't screw it up."

"A tall order," Aegis replies, but he takes your hand. You pull him up with ease, and at least that doesn't seem to surprise him. He's been around stronger blades, then. "But I will do my best to rise to it."

"Well, it would be hard to be worse than my last driver," you say. Your eyes go to the strange, light-ether tree. You've never heard of anything like that happening where a blade died (was shattered, death more than mere death), but there's no doubt in your bones that this is what happened to Van's shards. It's the _why_ you can't puzzle out.

_It must be returned to the earth, so that new blade can grow from those who have come before..._

Ion's words drift to the forefront of your mind and hang there. You resist the urge to snort. You didn't expect the grow part to be literal.

Aegis, too, looks at the 'tree,' but his expression is more curious than anything. "Do you know what this is? I've never seen anything like it."

You frown. "It's a story for another time," you say.

"I see." At least he doesn't argue, though the question Aegis puts voice to isn't much better for your nerves. "You killed your last driver, didn't you?"

You wince, but it's not in your nature to lie. "I did. But he killed me first."

Again the shock, this time accompanied by horror and something _hurt_ , and you flinch away from the emotional bleed, from the sympathy in it. "What? Why would anyone...?"

"If your blade is getting too independent and figuring out things you don't like, just kill them," you say, and you have so much practice in keeping your feelings out of the emotional bleed that you don't even think about how it must seem to Aegis, that you say these things without _feeling_ anything. You just kill the process operating on your emotions automatically when it starts. "Reset their memory and start over, and they'll be cooperative again."

"That's why humans can't be trusted," comes a voice from behind you. (An absent part of your mind gives Mithos a point for being able to smother his ether signature that much, though the light ether rippling off the tree probably helps him in that regard.) "They only see blades as tools."

You feel shock and offense in the emotional bleed again (Architect, Aegis doesn't feel anything with less than 100% intensity, does he?), but before your driver can react to defend humanity, you laugh.

You laugh, and it's as dark a sound as you are, and you'll _still_ instinctively stilling the emotions you let filter into the bleed because it hurts, it hurts so _much_ that you can't let that happen. You laugh, and press a hand to your chest as you turn, feeling the warmth of your core crystal underneath to steady yourself.

"Don't be mistaken, Mithos," you say, stepping towards him, matching gazes with him and refusing to bend. If _that's_ what he thinks, then no wonder he was ready to kill Aegis simply for the crime of being human. "My last driver wasn't a human. He was a flesh eater, just like yours."

Mithos doesn't just flinch. He _recoils_ , devastation writ large on his face. Behind him, you see shock on the face of his driver before the man's expression goes distant and dead.

"What? No, you're lying," Mithos says. "You _have_ to be lying, no blade would - how could another _blade_..."

"Whether someone is good or bad has nothing to do with whether they're human or blade," you say. "If that's the only metric you're using to judge, then you're going to make a lot of mistakes."

You don't have much sympathy for how you've shaken his world to its foundations. You wish you did, but in the same way you couldn't let the power of the Aegis fall into Van's hands, you can't leave it in the hands of a child who doesn't see the world with any nuance. Since you can't take Mithos' own power away from him, the only thing you can do is drag him into the shades of grey in the world, kicking and screaming if you have to.

The shock in your emotional bleed, at least, is steadily abating. Aegis pinches the bridge of his nose, and you hear him murmur something about 'black justice' under his breath. Whatever it is, you're sure it's equal parts true and unflattering to blades of your primary element.

Apparently reminded of his existence, Mithos spins to face Aegis, the haughty look back on his face. "Fine! I'll prove it! You came here for the power of the Aegis, didn't you?"

Aegis blinks and wilts slightly under the implied accusation. You're surprised he doesn't get affronted again, until you feel the grief bubbling at the edge of the emotion bleed.

"I did," he admits. "But not for my own sake."

And he pulls a box from his pack, wooden but clearly cared for, and opens the top of it in Mithos' direction. You can't see inside directly, but you can feel the pull of water ether radiating from the box, and the faint blue glow reflected on the inside of the lid - 

You have hyperintuition, but even without it, you aren't an idiot. You can guess the color of the core crystal fragment, embedded somewhere in your driver's body, is exactly that shade of bright blue.

"In the stories of the Aegis I grew up with," Aegis says, and his voice is heavy, the grief in the emotional bleed sparkling with the inclusions of hope, "it was said that they could repair the core crystals of damaged blades. Please, I..."

Again, Mithos stands in shock. His hand rises to a locket around his neck, clutching at it like a lifeline. "I... I can't," he says. "This isn't _damage_ , this is - she's _shattered_ , I can't do anything to fix that!"

Somehow, you think he isn't talking about the blade in the box. There's no reason for the _wail_ that's building in his voice, over someone he doesn't know.

"Even if I _could_ do something on my own," Mithos spits out after a shaken breath, "I'd need the whole thing. There's a piece of this blade in _your_ chest, you think I believe that you'd be willing to take it out? To die for the sake of a blade?"

"I would!" Aegis interrupts. "If that was what it took..."

His head tilts forward, on the edge of tears, the edge of despair, his hair hiding most of his expression. "She sacrificed herself for _me_ , an undeserving wretch who called himself her driver. If that was what it took to bring her back..."

Mithos doesn't respond. He stands there, trapped somewhere between pain and disbelief, still clutching his locket.

And it isn't your place, isn't your grief, your weight to carry. But... For the first time you can remember, you intentionally let _go_ , let everything you're feeling come crashing into the emotional bleed. It's sudden enough, apparently, that the wave of sympathetic pain makes Aegis look up at you.

"She wouldn't have wanted that," you say, quietly but firmly. "If she gave her life for yours, then she wanted you to _live_ it, not spend it trying to bring her back."

You step forward and lift your driver's hand over the box, closing the lid. Closing the past. "Even if she could be brought back, she wouldn't remember," you say, even more quietly, scraping the bottom of your heart to try and make the reality of the words not _cruel_. The blade system is cruel, not only to blades, but to everyone affected by it. "The best way to remember her - to _honor_ her - is to keep living with all your might with the gift that she gave you."

In the emotional bleed, the crashing waves of grief do not abate. They surge higher, as Aegis squeezes his fingers around the box in your hands, his shoulders shaking.

But he doesn't grow to anger, doesn't hate you for your words, and that's the best you could ask for, at the moment.

"To keep living with all your might..." you hear Mithos repeat, quietly. You glance at him. He looks on the edge of tears, and if he squeezes the locket in his hand any harder, it's going to shatter. When he realizes you're looking, he jerks his head up, putting the haughty expression back on, but it's more transparent than ever.

"There's nothing I can do for you," he says, "so get out of here. Count yourselves lucky I spared your lives."

And then wings flick out of his back, brilliant ether, and he jumps back into the air and flies off to the tower. When you glance around for his driver, the man's already gone.

So that's that, then.

Hell of a way to wake up.


	2. i'll march through the night

\----> Aegis

You aren't sure what to make of your new blade, not least of all because it feels like you can't process anything at all after your second, slightly less brief conversation with the Aegis.

But he stays with you. Almost stubbornly, in defiance of the Aegis, he stays with you, until night falls and the sounds of the forest quiet to rustling leaves and the buzz of insects drawn by the light of the ether tree. You sat down, at some point, and Asch sits next to you, content to wait.

Or perhaps he's getting his own bearings. You can't imagine what it's like, to be a blade who remembers, waking up after who knows how long buried in the forest. You just saw the glint of a core crystal and pulled it free, touched it thinking it was damaged as well, thinking to bring it along, and...

Well. You're grateful in some small measure, you suppose, because if Asch had been a normal blade, you're certain that you would be dead. You're not entirely certain that you're glad to be _alive_ , but you wouldn't have the option of considering it otherwise. Even now, the blade you've awoken feeds a deep-seated core of _confidence_ into the emotional bleed - uncertainty about the world, but no uncertainty about _himself_.

Another story from your childhood - you ate up every story you could find, especially involving the Aegises - said that Martel, the lost Aegis of shadow, could see all the deepest, darkest parts of someone, and accepted them anyway. You don't know if that's true, but from the handful you've met, dark blades certainly seem to be in touch with _themselves_ in that regard. Vicious was a cocksure bastard, never without a witty retort even in the grimmest possible situation, but underneath there was that same kind of certainty in himself, his own strange idea of justice.

As justice goes... You can't condemn Asch for killing his driver in eye-for-an-eye. It isn't a justice you would _endorse_ , but you cannot condemn it, any more than you can find it in yourself to condemn Vicious after he took credit and blame both for _your_ actions, your failures, your sins.

You slide your hand over your chest, to where the largest of Aqua's shards rests beneath your weathered uniform. You can't forgive Vicious, but you can't condemn him.

And you can't stop hearing the echo of his voice in "Keep living with all your might."

The breeze is still blowing through the trees, but somehow it doesn't affect so much as a strand of Asch's hair, making him look all the more deliberately unnatural as he sits just at the end of the ring of light around the ether tree. Wind ether, light green, plays between his fingers, as he uses it to blow any insects harmlessly away.

He's a dark blade. He shouldn't be able to - 

He catches you looking, and with a smirk, turns the ether into a ball of swirling winds that he lobs in your direction. You're too startled to avoid it, and it blows your hair around your face in random directions before vanishing.

... Right. A failed artificial Aegis. Why _not_ be able to use multiple elements?

"That was uncalled for," you say, smoothing your hair back down into a semblance of order.

"It made you think about something else instead of brooding," Asch replies.

...Huh. So it did.

"I wasn't brooding," you say instead. "I was... deliberating."

Asch doesn't reply, but there's a brief burst of color, only partially stifled amusement, in the emotional bleed. It's a wholly different experience from your last resonance - Aqua didn't hide anything from you, up to the very end. Asch seems to hide himself without even intentionally trying.

Your first impression of it colored him as a sociopath, someone who could kill his own driver without feeling a thing. Dark blades have always had a certain reputation for being cold, for being backstabbers, loyal to their own drivers and nothing else. But as ruthless as he may be, you don't, can't, see him as _heartless_. Not when he immediately responded to your grief with such sympathy, with more kindness than a stranger deserves, even when that stranger is his driver.

Perhaps especially when that stranger is his driver, after the experiences he's had. (And you understand why he was quick to draw a blade on you when he awoke, when you were still in too much shock from processing the new resonance to react. It can't have been coincidence that you found him this far out in the middle of nowhere, when he could have much more easily stabbed his driver in his sleep.)

(Even flesh eaters need to sleep. You know that for a fact.)

Unconsciously, your hand rises to rest over the piece of core crystal embedded in your chest. You catch yourself chuckling, almost despairingly.

"What am I supposed to do now?" you say. "Everything I worked for my whole life..."

Gone like the last remnants of rain on a sunny day. Asch is _right_ , that you shouldn't waste the life you've been given, but what are you supposed to do with it?

"...If I had the answer to that, I'd tell you," your new blade responds quietly. 

You look up at him, surprised. Standing his ground against the - against Mithos, he'd seemed so unshakable in his convictions. So confident and sure of himself in the world. "You don't...?"

"I don't even know the _date_ ," Asch responds blandly. "Much less anything about the state of the rest of the world."

That's... a remarkably fair point. Blades don't normally care much for the date until they've been around for a few years, if they ever do, but Asch is a blade who _remembers_. He has a point of reference, somewhere deep in the past, and probably people he cared about in his past life. While it's almost certain that those people are gone, they might have descendants he could find. It does happen, occasionally, that a blade who kept records will hunt down the family of their previous drivers, unusual but not unheard of.

You still hesitate. Asch's core crystal was practically buried, just from the usual action of forest debris turning into soil. He must have been there a long time.

Eventually you say, "The year is 2419."

A ripple in the emotional bleed, shut down too fast for you to identify it. It's unsettling how his face is a better indicator of his emotions than your resonance, even though his face doesn't portray especially _much_. Shock, though, is clear.

"Nine hundred years..." he says quietly. "Damn. I didn't think it had been that long."

Your _own_ shock bleeds into the resonance, you're sure. "Nine hundred years?" you repeat. "That's... _insane_. Even the most famous blades in the historical record don't go back much further than that!"

Except the Aegises, of course, but you're deliberately not thinking of them at this moment. Nine hundred years makes Asch the same age as the kingdoms of Tethe'alla and Sylvarant, if not older.

(You haven't read many stories from that era that weren't about the Aegises, but something tickles in familiarity anyway.)

Asch smirks. "Well, it's a good thing you're familiar with the historical record, then," he says. "Because I have a _lot_ of catching up to do."

You suddenly regret commenting.

(But you don't, though. Not really. Lacking in any other direction, catching Asch up on the history he's missed is _something_ you can do, some point of guidance for your life.)

(You failed your first blade. You don't intend to fail your second.)

\----> Mithos

You do a very good job of flying away from the two of them like your entire body _isn't_ vibrating with unspent emotions. You don't wait for Kratos to catch up, this time, flying directly up to one of the tower balconies overlooking the forest.

_The best way to remember her is to keep living with all your might._

Asch couldn't know those words would strike home, even if he is an aberration, a blade other than the Aegis who _remembers_ who he was a lifetime ago. Nine hundred years ago was well before the Kratos who became your driver was born, a period when you and Martel were nothing but core crystals waiting to be reactivated. It was before...

You clutch at the locket around your neck as you touch down. You pull at it fiercely enough that the chain breaks - not for the first time, but the first time in a while - and open it.

The shards inside are sharp, glittering, fiercely green. Unlike the ones in the blade eater's box, your sister's shards don't glow. You have to assume that's because the other dead blade is now powering a blade eater, still 'alive' on some wretched level to pump ether through human flesh.

And yet... He had been willing to die for her sake, if it would bring her back. The thing that stopped him was a blade, and sure _that_ makes good enough sense, no blade wants their driver to die, except that _this_ blade had, once upon a time. 

A blade who was willing to do horrible things to another blade, and a human who was willing to die for one. Neither of Asch's drivers sits well in your gut, and together they are a rock thrown into your window to shatter it.

 _It doesn't matter whether someone is a human or a blade_ , and you can't argue with that, can you? Can't tell a blade who was willing to kill his own driver over it (and the thought makes you sick instinctively, even when you try to place it on a human driver instead of Kratos) that his pain isn't real and doesn't matter. And yet Asch was willing to give another driver a chance, based just on the chance that he might _mean_ it when he said his intentions were good...

It makes you feel small, and petty, and ashamed. Martel was always willing to give humans another chance. That's how they killed her, why most of her shards are still in human hands, where they could be doing who knows what with them - 

And it circles around back to _the best way to honor her is to keep living with all your might_ and you snap and throw a ball of brilliant ether at the wall of your tower, because you need to throw _something_ and the only physical object to hand you would never, ever risk in such a petty display.

Because you know in your gut that he's right. Martel would never have wanted you to hide away from the world here, when you could be out helping people, helping blades who are in situations like the one Asch was in and had to find his own way out of. Even helping humans, if they needed it.

She wouldn't have wanted you to stop for her sake. She certainly wouldn't have wanted you to stop because you're afraid.

You heave a few breaths through your chest, and then straighten up and check the tower wall for damage. There's a few surface-level cracks, but it was built to stand up to just about anything blades could throw at it, even you. That's why the tower is safe, even mythologized as it is as the residing place of the Aegis.

(The only Aegis, now.)

You cast your thoughts outward. Kratos is at the base of the tower now, which is good. Asch and his driver are still in the woods - they haven't moved much, which is... fine. You don't actually want to confront them again, so they can stay there until the morning at least. 

(You're not so much afraid of confronting them in battle, because of course you'd win, as you are of what else Asch will force you to confront with his words and his history. You think you might understand that human phrase about the pen and the sword now. You're a _blade_ , a physical injury wouldn't stick to you and bother you like this.)

You sigh, and prod Kratos lightly in the emotional bleed. There's a nub of concern in return, which means he's okay enough, for the time being. You jump off the balcony, spreading your wings to slow your descent, and land lightly next to him as he reaches the door.

"Do you think he's right?" comes spilling out of your mouth. The locket is still in your hand, squeezed to the point that it's leaving imprints. "That she wouldn't have wanted..."

This. Whatever the hell it is you're doing.

Kratos bites his lip, and you feel a ruffle of conflicted emotions in the resonance. Rather than answering you immediately, he ducks into the open door, leaving you with no choice but to follow him.

The entrance chamber of the tower is, as always, massive, cold, and empty. There's a small amount of travelling gear stacked to the side of the doorway, the only spot of color and disorder, the only proof that anyone actually lives here. Kratos keeps his gear relatively neat and in good repair, but what remains of yours is... 

Well. You've hardly so much as looked at it in a century or so, at least. You're not entirely sure why you're looking at it now.

"I think," Kratos says very suddenly, as he straightens out whatever he was thinking, "that he didn't intend his words for you. But if they mean something, then maybe some part of you was waiting to hear them."

It's thoughtful and considered, even if it isn't exactly what you're hoping to hear. Kratos has never pushed you, always shied away from dealing with confronting your grief directly, so you're not really surprised that he's telling you to deal with it on your own. Sort of. In a backwards kind of way.

But he isn't saying Asch was wrong. Might even, on some level, be saying that he's right.

You're not sure that you like that, but you listen to it, because you trust Kratos more than you do some random blade you've just met. Kratos actually knows what you've been through. If he thinks there might be some merit to it...

He can probably tell from your silence that you're thinking, even without the emotional bleed. He makes the 'I'm trying to figure out the words face,' and you wait as patiently as you can for whatever he's going to say. You're not surprised that he's not having the best day anymore - Martel is painful for him, too. Both of you had felt it, when the resonance didn't so much _snap_ as _shatter_.

Asch calling him out directly as a flesh eater probably didn't help, either.

"Sleep on it," Kratos says at length. "You don't have to decide anything now."

Once again, your immediate reaction is that that isn't particularly helpful. But then you take a breath, and - 

"You're right," you say, because it's his way of telling you to not sit and spin about it. (Even if a dark corner of your mind observes that sitting in your tower and spinning seems to be all you do.) "I'm... going to try to sleep, then."

Kratos nods, and you turn away to climb the tower's massive, lonely stairs to your room. Maybe things will make more sense in the morning.

\----> Asch

Aegis is fairly amicable to your questions and knows at least enough about the world that you feel like you have your feet under you now. 

Overall, bitterly, you can't help but think that the world hasn't changed much. Nine hundred years, long enough for the countries you knew to fall and new kingdoms to rise in their place, and still mostly the same problems.

Mostly, because there are also some _new_ problems. You wish that the problem of the Aegis cannons didn't stick in the back of your throat the way it does, didn't hum with the fact that you don't _really_ know where you fall on the power scale relative to the Aegises and what that means for the possibility of you being strapped into one - 

But there's another, more immediate problem that prompts a reaction out of you. One that makes you feel, perhaps, a little regret for your recent encounter with Mithos.

"They _shattered_ Martel?" you repeat. Aegis winces, maybe from your tone, maybe from the fact that you didn't entirely fetter your horror from the emotional bleed.

"Officially, it was an accident," he says, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. "Whether that's true or not..."

You sigh. "Whether that's true or not, it doesn't make a difference to Mithos."

It puts a lot of things in perspective. And you do feel a little bit guilty, for unknowingly rubbing Mithos' nose in his loss. Only a little bit, but even that much is unusual enough to notice.

Mostly, you just feel shock. You believe 'officially, it was an accident,' about as much as you can throw the tower glowing white against the night sky. But in the times you remember, even those who weren't followers of the Church had _respect_ for the Aegis. They were the blades who helped to create the world. 

They're as deeply flawed as any other people, you've seen that for yourself today, and perhaps that's some part of why the world is flawed - the creation of imperfect people is itself imperfect, and all. But the idea of _breaking_ one...

Well, then again, if it wasn't your story, you might have had the same disbelief as Mithos to hear what Van had done. People are always capable of being both better and more awful than you could have imagined.

You shove your hair back away from your face, running your fingers through it as you do, and return your attention to the present.

"I suppose I cannot blame him for his hatred of humans, at that," Aegis says.

"Nothing motivates blades quite like our siblings," you say. "No driver could hope to compare in importance."

"You sound as though you speak from experience," Aegis observes thoughtfully, putting a hand against his chin. You think that you don't successfully hide your flinch.

"I have a brother," you finally say, crossing your arms and looking away. You can still feel his eyes on you. (Orange is such a strange color for human eyes that you'd think it's a side effect of being a blade eater if the core crystal he's joined with wasn't blue.)

"I would have expected a sister, if they were trying to imitate the Aegises," Aegis says thoughtfully, but he doesn't seem inclined to dig, and for that you're grateful. 

Thinking of Luke adds some desperate tinge to your thoughts that you don't want to revisit, right now. You want to know what happened to him, so badly, but if you let yourself follow that impulse it will become your reason for living (he was already your reason for dying) and...

Well, if Mithos proves anything, he proves what a bad idea it is to not have an identity founded in _yourself_ , rather than someone else. And your driver might not be much better off, at the moment.

"What about you?" you ask, ignoring the brief alert of your intuition that you're putting your foot in it. "Any family?"

"No," comes the simple response, heavy with too many emotions to finger any particular one. "For the better, no doubt. I wouldn't want any family I had to be burdened by being related to a disgrace like me."

You stifle the frustration that flickers through you before it reaches the emotional bleed. "What did you do that was so terrible, then?" you ask, trying to keep your tone of voice gentle. You're not sure that you succeeded. You're not sure if Aegis would even notice, with the way his head hangs forward over his hands.

"I helped a condemned man escape prison. A guilty man, to be sure, but... Not of the crime for which he was condemned." A small, short laugh, the kind that sounds like glass breaking (like a core crystal shattering). "What kind of knight sets free the criminal he himself caught?"

"A good one," you respond immediately. "One who puts true justice over _looking_ just."

And Aegis looks up at you, and there's something wild in his eyes, something wild in his emotions, and you wonder if anyone at all had told him he did the right thing.

"It... isn't that simple," he says. But there's a waver in the misery of his expression, which almost counts as a smile under the circumstances. "But... thank you."

But at the same time, if he's been disgraced, well, then it explains at least why he was so eager to die. You can't imagine that being a knight is so different in this day and age that it _wouldn't_ be the kind of thing someone builds their whole life around. "I'm guessing you can't go back, then," you say.

"No," Aegis agrees. "I'm a wanted man in Sylvarant myself, now."

"You should probably get some different clothes, then," you say. 

It's enough to startle another half-chuckle out of him. "I suppose I should, at that," he says. "There were... other things on my mind, up until now."

Yeah, you can understand that.

"In the morning, then," you say. "We'll head to..." You stop yourself before saying _Malkuth_ , because your gut tells you that the nations you knew are long gone.

"Tethe'alla," Aegis fills in. "Yes, I suppose we may as well." He looks up towards the distant sky, but doesn't make a move to get more comfortable.

You hesitate, then... "Aegis? I've slept for the last nine hundred years. Get some rest. I'll keep watch."

Not that you think there will be anything to bother you, this close to where the Aegis resides, unless you get particularly unlucky (but your driver, at least, seems to have enough bad luck for any three men). But it seems to relax something, and there's a loosening in the emotional bleed as Aegis nods and curls up, head pillowed on one arm and his face disappearing under the waves of his hair.

Before very long at all, he's asleep. 

You shift to get a little more comfortable, and settle in for a long night with your thoughts.


End file.
